Catalonia: solidarity with imprisoned elected officials

By François Alfonsi, Benoît Bitteau and Michèle Rivasi, MEPs of the Group of the Greens / European Free Alliance (EFA),- January 29, 2020 at 5:04 pm

Speaking of the “authoritarian drift” of the Spanish state, several Greens-EFA MEPs express their support for the Catalan elected representatives who, they claim, suffer injustice and discrimination.

Tribune. Our fellow MEP Oriol Junqueras was elected last May, with over a million votes, as an MEP. His election, contested by the Spanish authorities, was confirmed by a decision of the judges of the Court of Justice of the European Union [1]. Yet he languishes in prison with eight colleagues - six men and two women - democratically elected like him by the Catalan people.

Their sentences range from nine to thirteen years in prison, terms reserved for very serious criminal acts anywhere in Europe, even though they committed no violence or embezzlement. Imprisoned separately in the country's two women's prisons, Carme Forcadell and Dolors Bassa suffer conditions of detention which are even harsher because they are isolated in their respective prisons.

We visited these detainees in their prisons on January 23 and 24. It was highly moving for the three of us to share a moment of solidarity with elected offici als who are facing the worst political repression that exists right now in Europe. Beyond the affront to democracy represented by the disproportionate prison sentences inflicted on eminently respectable politicians, we have to report on the alarming observations that we have made, on the way in which the Spanish state has thrown a lead blanket over the whole of Catalan society.

“Lifelong precariousness”

We met with administrative officials of different levels, who were involved through their professional functions in the organization of the October 1, 2017 referendum. One of them, for example, is the director of the television channel TV3, the most watched in Catalonia, which broadcast before the referendum television spots ordered by the Generalitat, its supervisory body, for a sum amount of ting to about €700,000 euros. He was ordered to pay a fine of the same amount, which condemned him and his family to "lifelong precauriousness".

The same can be said of the Generalitat official who was at the helm of "Diplocat", an organization responsible for disseminating the action of the Generalitat and therefore of the self-determination process decided by the majority elected in 2017. He is being expected to pay millions of euros! Many mayors are being prosecuted and threatened with similar sentences for having opened, and made available to the organization of the referendum, public premises which served as polling stations. The cases presented to us are multiple, and each more shocking than the one before. It is the whole of a society, 7.5 million Europeans of Catalan nationality, that is being attempted to be stifled methodically by sheltering behind the pretext of "non-interference in the internal affairs of a state". Exactly as we regularly denounce, in Hungary for example.

The responsibility for this scandalous state of affairs does not lie mainly with the political leaders of Spain, and even less with the still-new Pedro Sanchez-Pablo Iglesias government, that emerged from the last gedneral election, and that is committed to opening a "negotiating table" on the future of Catalonia.

They are, as were the governments which preceded them, regardless of their tendencies, under the pressure of "the Spanish deep state" in which the judiciary plays an essential role. Forty years ago, the Iberian Peninsula suffered two dictatorships of sinister memory, the Franco and Salazar régimes. While Portugal has been able to free itself completely from that past, such is not the case of Spain, where the legacy of the Franco period remains very strong, as we can see, for ourselves, on the right-most benches in our European Parliament.

Europe as a counter- power

The only real counter-power to this largely hidden power is Europe, as the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which quashed the decisions of the Spanish Supreme Court[2,3], vividly showed. Since then our colleagues Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comìn sit amongst us, and Clara Ponsatì will join them shortly. But Oriol Junqueras was not released as the CJEU expressly called for, and, worse still, we witnessed the scandal of a President of the European Parliament yielding to the injunctions of the jurisdiction of a member state, when he is bound by a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and he is primarily responsible for it to be applied.

All the facts that we have observed, and the succession of democratic dysfunctions that have occurred with regard to Catalonia, including the Presidency of the European Parliament, lead us to sound an alarm. In many European countries, including France, the far right is at the threshold of power. How will we defend the democratic forces of these countries if they find themselves in the grip of an authoritarian drift similar to that which prevails in Spain? Tomorrow the debate on the request for the waiver of the parliamentary immunity of our Catalan colleagues will take place under even more pressure from the Spanish State establishment. If we give in to them, what will happen to us if we ever face perverted State authorities?

Spanish democratic forces are blinded by the symbolic stakes of the conflict with Catalonia, as have been other democratic forces in other States in the history of Europe. As Frenchmen, we remember the excesses that occurred during the Algerian conflict at the very beginning of the construction of Europe.

For all the defenders of democracy in Europe, it would be a serious irresponsibility to turn a blind eye to what is happening in Catalonia for the benefit of a game of power and alliances in which Spanish political forces "hysterized" by the Catalan issue are playing.

It would be so for Catalonia, and for Spain as a whole, and also for Europe, because this is a foretaste of very difficult times in the near future, in view of the political developments which we will probably have to cope with in certain Member States. The only wise decision that we can take as MEPs today, following in this way the path traced by the judges of the Court of Justice of the European Union, is to stand in solidarity with our Catalan colleagues in the face of the injustices and discriminations they are enduring. Among the victims of the authoritarian drift of the Spanish state, members of our Greens-EFA group are paying the heaviest price. We are directly involved.